[NYTr] Monbiot on Bali: We've been suckered again by the US

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Tim Murphy - activ-l


The Guardian - Dec 17, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2228615,00.html

We've been suckered again by the US. 
So far the Bali deal is worse than Kyoto

America will keep on wrecking climate talks as long as those with vested
interests in oil and gas fund its political system 

By George Monbiot

"After 11 days of negotiations, governments have come up with a
compromise deal that could even lead to emission increases. The highly
compromised political deal is largely attributable to the position of
the United States, which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and
automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to
the talks spilling over into an all-night session." 

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So
what? Well it was published on December 11 - I mean to say, December 11
1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto protocol.
George Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its
climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore. 

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010.
Gore's team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then the Americans did
something worse: they destroyed the whole agreement. 

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home.
But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer
through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts
from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an exuberant
global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy
"hot air" from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made
against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had
subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union countries would pass
well below the bar. Gore's scam allowed them to sell the gases they
weren't producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations
could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Entrepreneurs in India and China
have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to
produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will
pay to clean them up. 

The result of this sabotage is that the market for low-carbon
technologies has remained moribund. Without an assured high value for
carbon cuts, without any certainty that government policies will be
sustained, companies have continued to invest in the safe commercial
prospects offered by fossil fuels rather than gamble on a market
without an obvious floor. 

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore also
guaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we
don't. When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify
the Kyoto protocol, the world cursed and stamped its foot. But his
intransigence affected only the US. Gore's team ruined it for everyone. 

The destructive power of the American delegation is not the only thing
that hasn't changed. After the Kyoto protocol was agreed, the then
British environment secretary, John Prescott, announced: "This is a
truly historic deal which will help curb the problems of climate
change. For the first time it commits developed countries to make
legally binding cuts in their emissions." Ten years later, the current
environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that "this is an historic
breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever, all the
world's nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous
climate change." Do these people have a chip inserted? 

In both cases, the US demanded terms that appeared impossible for the
other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly
rejected Gore's proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened
to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held
out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly
appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both
worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it. 

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. American negotiators
have pulled the same trick twice, and for the second time our
governments have fallen for it. 

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even
worse than the Kyoto protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A
new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the
worst of Gore's trading scams, the clean development mechanism. Benn
and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train
leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is
travelling in the wrong direction. 

Although Gore does a better job of governing now he is out of office,
he was no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful
protocol, but American politics had made it impossible. In July 1997,
the Senate had voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat
developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones.
Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to
accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The
Clinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding
commitments for the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions
trading. But even when he succeeded, he announced that "we will not
submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key
developing nations participate". Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable
war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the US act this
way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to
two great corrupting forces. I have written before about the role of the
corporate media - particularly in the US - in downplaying the threat of
climate change and demonising anyone who tries to address it. I won't
bore you with it again, except to remark that at 3pm eastern standard
time on Saturday, there were 20 news items on the front page of the Fox
News website. The climate deal came 20th, after "Bikini-wearing
stewardesses sell calendar for charity" and "Florida store sells 'Santa
Hates You' T-shirt". 

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaign
finance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because
its members are bought and bound by the companies that stand to lose.
When you study the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are
struck by two things. 

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources
sector - mostly coal, oil, gas, logging and agribusiness - has given
$418m to federal politicians in the US. Transport companies have given
$355m. The other is the width: the undiscriminating nature of this
munificence. The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them
also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas
companies lavished money on Bush, but they also gave Gore $142,000,
while transport companies gave him $347,000. The whole US political
system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the
biosphere. 

So don't believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president
to sort it out. This is a much bigger problem than George Bush. Yes, he
is viscerally opposed to tackling climate change. But viscera don't
have much to do with it. Until the American people confront their
political funding system, their politicians will keep speaking from the
pocket, not the gut.